My Bereaved Billionaire: A Clean Billionaire Romance (My Billionaire A-Z Book 2)

by Katie Evergreen

  Jolting awake, Liberty groaned. She stretched herself out of the chair, pushing her arms up towards the ceiling. Her spine and shoulders cracked loudly, her muscles threatening to cramp. She massaged her back with one hand, rummaging through the papers with the other.

  Something had woken her, a revelation uncovered by her subconscious mind as she slept, a thought that something wasn’t quite as it seemed to be. But what was it? Where had she seen it? Papers went flying off the table as she tore through them, looking for a word or a phrase that stood out. It felt, to Liberty, like a dream, a memory that she couldn’t quite place, but the more she thought about it the further away it scurried. Then she saw it. On the actual deeds of Pebble Cove. Written there as plain as the nose on her face.

  It wasn’t Nate. It had never been Nate. How had she not seen it before? How could she have been so blind? The paper work noted quite clearly that Pebble Cove hadn’t been bought by Nathaniel Parker Jnr at all. It had been bought by Nathaniel Parker Snr.

  It had been bought by his dad.

  She ignored the sudden wave of sickness, jumping up and running to fetch her mobile. She switched it on, willing it to hurry up.

  “Pick up, pick up!” Liberty shouted at her phone, the deeds firmly gripped in her hand.

  But Nate wasn’t picking up.

  Liberty wondered why he hadn’t stopped when he’d given her the envelope. Why he hadn’t come in and explained it all away. But would she have given him the chance to do that? Probably not. And Nate knew that. She’d given him chance after chance to amend his behavior, and this had been the last straw. Liberty was doused in a cold sweat as his voicemail kicked in—his soft, sweet, caring voice that she’d now never get the chance to hear again.

  She hung up, not wanting to leave a message, and immediately dived back into Google, surfacing a few moments later with the number she needed. She dialed the number and waited.

  “Matilda Arnold, how may I help you?”

  Liberty opened her mouth and, after all the recent occasions where she had been lost for words, made up for it without taking a breath.

  “Miss Arnold, I don’t know if you remember me. My name is Liberty Reynolds…”

  She talked and talked. She told Tilly about the first time she’d spoken to Nate, the feelings she had when she’d first laid eyes on him, how she had so much wanted to kiss him when they stood together in her parents’ old bedroom, how she felt betrayed when Nathaniel Snr had mentioned the dead wife, the way she felt she’d lost her best friend when he left, how wonderful their first proper date had been, and how much she loved him. It was only when she paused for breath that Liberty started to feel a bit silly.

  “I really do love him,” she said again, before the rational side of her brain could stop her. “And now I feel as though I’ve lost him, before I ever really had him.”

  Liberty heard a small sigh at the other end of the phone.

  “I did wonder why he’d been so miserable,” Matilda said. “I told you he was a good guy. He’s just not very sensible sometimes, and his family really are something else. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  Liberty heard a chair scraping and the hiss of a coffee machine, which made her own taste buds tingle.

  “I didn’t see him yesterday,” Matilda said. “Now I know why. Let me just check his calendar and see what he’s got on… oh… oh no…”

  “What?” Liberty said, thinking that her stomach couldn’t sink any further than it already had.

  “It looks as though he’s cancelled all his appointments, for the next few months.”

  “Months? What? Why?”

  “Hold on, I don’t know, I’m just checking his business account. And his emails.”

  Liberty could hear the tapping of keys on the other end of the phone.

  “Oh. We could have a problem.”

  Liberty had been wrong about her stomach.

  “It looks as though he’s going away,” Tilly said. “He’s booked flights to… I’m not too sure I should really be telling you all of this.”

  “Please, Tilly. Please.”

  “Okay. It looks as though he’s going to Europe, on an extended vacation. Looking at his emails, it could be a permanent thing. Oh, Nate, what are you doing?”

  “Oh no,” Liberty was thankful she was sitting down, her legs felt like jelly. She’d met the love of her life and then chased him away to the other side of the world.

  “When is he going?” she asked. Tilly sighed.

  “He’s chartered the plane for first thing tomorrow

  28

  Nate dove into the pool, staying under for as long as his lungs would hold him. His powerful legs drove him forward as his hands cut through the water, his lean body perfectly streamlined. He rose and took a deep breath before allowing his shoulders to propel him further, stroke after stroke. He didn’t think, he didn’t pause, he just swam. Length after length after length.

  He’d gotten home from Little Norwich and turned on his laptop. Ignoring the work emails and the worried texts from Tilly, he’d started looking at getting away. He’d been officially single for less than a week and already he’d messed things up. He felt like a failure, and that wasn’t something he’d felt for a long time.

  It hadn’t helped that his dad had yet again barged his way in like a bulldozer and smashed what tiny strands of hope had remained in his relationship with Liberty. Just thinking of what his family had done to her made his stomach shrivel up like he was sucking on a lemon. How could he have messed things up quite so royally in such a short space of time?

  He’d lied to her from the outset, he’d put her in an awkward situation with his family, he’d made her feel unworthy, he’d walked away, but most of all, he’d totally and utterly fallen head over heels in love with her. There was no single person in his life, right now or previously, who had made him feel so welcome and at ease, whilst also causing his brain to melt into oblivion through sheer beauty.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her, especially by giving her back the deeds to Pebble Cove. He’d just wanted to make things easier for her. Now she was mortgage free, bills paid, and she could concentrate on her father. But he understood why she hated him now, she felt like he’d bought her off after treating her so badly. She’d always told him that you couldn’t just throw money at your problems to make them better, and she was right.

  He dug deeper into the reserves of strength he had, pushing himself faster and faster through the water. The rhythm beat words into his head with each stroke.

  Forget. Her. Forget. Her. Forget. Her.

  He’d soon be on a plane to Paris, and away from the heartache. He could forget himself for a few months, traveling freely across a distant continent and returning home only when he had truly forgotten her too.

  A sharp pain ran down his ribs, Nate wasn’t sure if it was from the exertion or the thought of forgetting Liberty. He swam through the pain, promising himself only five more laps then he’d stop. And he’d start again with his new life.

  He glided through the water like a shark until he was spent. Then he hauled his upper body out of the pool and rested there, his head on his arms. The muscles in his shoulders throbbed as he breathed, quickly and deeply. The lactic acid pumped painfully through his body. Nate ducked his head down under the water one last time, then lifted his body out. He grabbed the towel from the lounger and wrapped it around his shoulders. The act threw him back to two days ago, wrapping the towel around Liberty as she climbed from the dinghy. It seemed like a million years ago now, like a different lifetime. He had been over the moon when she’d told him they could try and make it work between them, his heart had soared higher than he could have imagined.

  And now here he was, alone. The way he’d always be. Maybe the only kind of woman he’d ever be successful with was a pretend one.

  “Stupid,” he told himself, rubbing his hair vigorously with the towel.

  He threw it back onto the lounger and headed indoors. Why wait until
tomorrow to leave? Nate dialed the company pilot and demanded that the flight was rescheduled. The pilot, not used to speaking directly to the company director, especially an angry director, muttered a few words about checking the air space before Nate hung up on him. He walked through the empty villa, guilt coursing through him. He wasn’t angry at the pilot he was angry at himself. All these years he pretended to be married, and for what? For the company, for the money? What had that left him with? A huge villa devoid of any warmth because he didn’t have anyone to share it with. He thought back to Pebble Cove and its nooks and crannies. The wonky pictures and the disintegrating porch. All of those things gave the motel life and character. Yes, he loved his villa, but it wasn’t a home. And the one person who could have helped him make his house a home was never going to speak to him again.

  Nate grabbed his carryall from the closet and threw in some clothes; jeans and T-shirts, joggers and vests, just enough to get by. Looking around his bedroom, there was nothing to say goodbye to. He shut the door behind him and padded down to the garage, with a heavy bag and an even heavier heart.

  Liberty followed the directions she’d punched into her sat nav, trying and failing to stay within the speed limits, especially on the freeway. She’d tried to call Nate after she’d spoken to Tilly, but his phone had gone straight to voicemail. Liberty was surprised she’d connected at all, she thought he would have blocked her number straight away. She cringed at the memory of their last conversation, the way she’d unleashed her fury at him. She’d have blocked herself if she was in his position.

  All the red lights seemed to be working against Liberty, it was taking far longer than the sat nav had promised her it would. She watched the expected arrival time slowly creep up, knowing that with every minute added to it, a minute to rectify what had happened with Nate passed.

  “Come on, come on.”

  Liberty almost hit her horn, the frustrations were overwhelming. The lines of traffic were slower the closer she got to the city. She was inching toward the little flashing dot on the screen, but not quickly enough for her liking. Her free foot tapped out a rhythm that matched her heart, panicked. At least Nate wasn’t due to fly until tomorrow, she still had a day to try to persuade him that she wasn’t all bad.

  Her head ached with the guilt of some of the things she’d said to him. If nothing else, she needed to tell him he wasn’t a bad person, that she knew he had a good heart and that she was sorry for all the pain she’d caused him. If he still wanted to escape to another country, that was fine.

  Only it wasn’t fine, because whenever she thought about never seeing Nate again, waves of nausea hit her like a tsunami.

  She shook her head and tried to concentrate on the road, but it was so much harder to do that when stuck in traffic. Each little embarrassing moment crawled its way in to Liberty’s thoughts and niggled away at her like a squirrel at a nut.

  “Argh!”

  She banged the steering wheel then pulled the car over into the next lane, ignoring the horns of the SUV she’d just cut up. She weaved in and out of the traffic for the next few minutes, watching the estimated arrival time shift in the right direction. If this is what it felt like to break the rules for the person you love, then Liberty would just have to get used to the racing heart rate and sweaty palms. Nate was worth breaking rules for.

  She raced off the freeway and followed the map to the coast. She passed mansion after mansion, the driveways getting longer, the fences getting higher. Finally, Liberty heard the electronic voice saying those coveted words, ‘you have arrived at your destination’. She slowed right down and checked the numbers on the gates until she reached the right one.

  The gate opened smoothly once Liberty had managed to punch in the key code that Tilly had given her. Her fingers were so sweaty and her hands so shaky that it took four attempts. She was worried that she would set off some sort of alarm in the house, and Nate would see her coming and run and hide, but she was greeted by nothing but silence. She drove in and parked in front of the villa.

  There was a moment when she didn’t want to get out of the car, held back by her terror of rejection. At least while she hadn’t been able to get hold of Nate, she still had the hope in her heart that they could fix things, that he didn’t hate her. If she got out and knocked at the door, he could tell her exactly how he felt. Her hopes would be dashed. And what would she have left if she had no hope?

  The doorbell rang, echoing through the interior. She waited for a while but there was no answer. There were glass windows either side of the large door and she put her hand up to the glass and peered inside. She could see the white washed walls of the hallway, stairs leading down to what looked like an open plan living area, but it was too hard to see much. There was a coat rack that stood empty except for an old rain mac, and a hallway table with nothing on it except for an empty bowl.

  Liberty pressed the doorbell again, her blood running cold. She too had a bowl in her hallway, back in her flat. Hers was always full of things she didn’t really need—old hair scrunchies, stamps, jewelry that she’d flung off as soon as she’d stepped in the door—but one thing she always left in her bowl were her keys. If the keys weren’t in the bowl, she wasn’t home.

  She was too late. Nate had gone.

  29

  “He’s gone, Tilly,” Liberty sobbed into the phone. “He’s already gone.”

  “I know, Liberty,” Tilly said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve just checked the itinerary and he changed his flight.”

  “But what can I do now?” Liberty sobbed. Tilly sighed.

  “There’s not a lot either of us can do, he’s not booked a hotel, he’s probably going off the grid for a bit. I’ve never known him to do something like this before. He must really need some space. It’s understandable. He must have fallen hard for you.”

  “And all I did was hurt him,” Liberty whispered.

  “No,” Tilly said sternly. “Neither of you meant to hurt the other. It’s been such a whirlwind, neither of you could stand the right way up, let alone make sensible decisions.”

  There was silence while they both digested the magnitude of what had just happened. Liberty leaned back against the door to Nate’s house, wishing more than anything that it would open, and he would appear there.

  “You know,” Tilly continued. “I really wish things had worked out differently for you both. You seemed like a good match. I’d never seen Nate so bowled over by a person before. When he eventually returns, I will tell him you tried to see him. But, Liberty, don’t waste your life waiting for him to come back. If there’s one thing that I wish I could reverse, it’s the lies we had to tell for Nate, for his company. It stopped him living his life, achieving his true potential. What it gave in wealth, it took in happiness. He has so much love to give it broke my heart every single day. Don’t do that to yourself.”

  Liberty could barely utter a word. She managed to cough up a thank you to Tilly, then the other woman ended the call. That was it then. Liberty had managed to scare away the one man who had made her feel like she was worth something. The one man who made her feel at ease. Why did she always ruin everything good? Why did she always push away the people who loved her?

  She stumbled over to her car and fell into the driver’s seat. Tears fell freely down her cheeks, soaking her white vest top and jeans. She fell onto the wheel, her head buried in her arms. Great wracking sobs shuddered through her whole body, leaving her feeling utterly empty.

  What was she supposed to do now? Return to Pebble Cove, pack all of her life in the suitcase she’d arrived with, and go back to San Diego? The whole idea seemed absurd. But she couldn’t stay there. She knew that if she stayed in the motel, Fred and Ginger wouldn’t return. Her dad couldn’t manage the motel without them. No, she’d do everyone a favor if she upped and left again, they were doing better before she arrived, and she’d nearly ruined it all.

  Liberty didn’t know if she still had a job, or an apartment, to go back to. With any
luck she could pick up where she left off—without Brett, of course, though that wasn’t a bad thing at all. The one good thing that had come from all this was that there was no mortgage on the motel now, so she could hire some live-in help for her dad while he was recovering. That would work well, he could stay where he was and carry on working. He’d be lost without the motel.

  The sun seared its way through the windscreen, scorching her head. Liberty had no idea what the time was, or even what day it was. The last few hours had merged into one surreal, nightmare state. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually gone to bed. Exhaustion was clouding her like a black cloak, weighted down by her dread.

  A loud rapping at the window made her jump.

  “Urgh,” she groaned.

  The last thing she needed right now was a member of Nate’s staff moving her on like a stray dog in a shop doorway. Couldn’t they see she was incapacitated at the moment?

  The knocking got louder.

  “Alright, alright,” she shouted, her head still resting on the steering wheel.

  It felt too heavy, wobbling on her shoulders as she lifted it up. With the tears and the sun streaming through the windshield, Liberty couldn’t see anything but shadows. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, glad that it had been a few days since she’d worn mascara—although no doubt it would have been washed away by the tears she’d shed. The handle of the door clicked and started to open before she’d managed to focus her vision.

  “Hey, okay, I’m going,” she said. “Just give me a minute to compose myself, please?”

  “Liberty?”

  She knew the voice, she just didn’t dare look.